Smoke billows from a fire in this aerial view showing a deforested plot of the Amazon rainforest in Rondonia State, Brazil September 28, 2021. REUTERS/Adriano Machado
KUALA LUMPUR, – Countries are spending only a fraction of the nearly $500 billion needed each year to stop tree loss and restore forests worldwide to help meet climate and nature goals, researchers warned on Tuesday.
An annual report on the 2014 New York Declaration on Forests – backed by more than 200 countries, firms and green groups – found the sustained reductions in forest loss needed to meet its 2030 target to end deforestation are highly unlikely near-term.
This year’s report focused on finance and forestry in national climate action plans submitted for the 2015 Paris climate accord, finding that many governments have yet to set specific forest protection goals under that pact.
The progress report by 28 civil society and research groups also found that, since 2010, countries have invested only between 0.5% and 5% of the estimated $460 billion per year needed to conserve, manage and revive the planet’s forests.
Michael Allen Brady of the Center for International Forestry Research, which contributed to the report, said current funding was “only a drop in the bucket of what we need”.
“By ramping up investments in forest protection and sustainable management, the world could reduce emissions while securing clean air, water, fibre, food, livelihoods and biodiversity,” the scientist added in a statement.
Cutting down forests has major implications for global goals to curb climate change, as trees absorb about a third of carbon emissions, which they release if they rot or are burned.
In 2020, tropical forest losses around the world equalled the size of the Netherlands, according to monitoring service Global Forest Watch.
Under the Paris climate accord, about 195 countries agreed to limit the rise in global average temperatures this century to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius and ideally to 1.5C above preindustrial levels.
Researchers analysed the national goals set for that agreement by 32 countries with the most potential to reduce carbon emissions through halting deforestation, improving forest management and planting new trees – including Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, China and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The report found ambition was low, with only 10 nations having set quantitative targets, while about a quarter of the total said their targets could only be met if they received international financial support.
“What we can see from these national climate plans is that the ambition falls short of the potential,” said the report’s lead author Franziska Haupt, a managing partner at advisory firm Climate Focus.
Besides boosting funding, wealthy commodity-consuming countries should partner with developing nations to tackle deforestation and introduce legislation to clean up their supply chains, Haupt told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
She also called for public subsidies to be diverted away from activities that contribute to deforestation, such as commercial agriculture and fossil fuels, and into greener projects that empower indigenous and local communities.
The report did praise efforts to tackle deforestation in some countries, such as Vietnam’s streamlined land-use planning and regulation, and bans on illegal timber trading and clearing of old-growth forests in Laos and Indonesia.
In a separate report published in the journal Global Change Biology on Tuesday, researchers identified the lowest-cost solutions involving land that countries could adopt to cut planet-heating emissions and meet their climate pledges.
Roughly half of those cost-effective emissions reductions would come from protecting, restoring and improving management of forests and other ecosystems, such as mangroves and peatlands, they found.
Changes to farming practices, switching consumer diets to more sustainable and healthy foods, and reducing food waste could also play a major part, the study added.
Pope Francis arrives to meet with the participants at the interparliamentary meeting on the U.N. climate conference, COP26, in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican Oct. 9. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Vatican City — Pope Francis called on lawmakers worldwide Oct. 9 to overcome “the narrow confines” of partisan politics to quickly reach consensus on fighting climate change.
The pope addressed parliamentarians who were in Rome for a preparatory meeting before the annual U.N. climate conference, which begins in Glasgow, Scotland, on Oct. 31.
Francis referred to a joint appeal he and other religious leaders signed Oct. 4 that calls for governments to commit to ambitious goals at the U.N. conference, which experts consider a critical opportunity to tackle the threat of global warming.
“To meet this challenge, everyone has a role to play,” Francis told the visiting lawmakers from many countries. “That of political and government leaders is especially important, and indeed crucial.”
“This demanding change of direction will require great wisdom, foresight and concern for the common good: in a word, the fundamental virtues of good politics,” Francis said.
Francis said earlier he intended to participate in the upcoming conference, but the Vatican announced Oct. 8 that he would not attend and the Vatican delegation would be led by the secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin.
No explanation was given, but the 84-year-old pope underwent intestinal surgery in July.
The pope expressed hope Oct. 9 that the lawmakers’ efforts at the climate conference and beyond “will be illuminated by the two important principles of responsibility and solidarity.”
“We owe this to the young, to future generations,” he said.
Caring for humanity’s “common home,” Francis said, “is not just a matter of discouraging and penalizing improper practices, but also, and above all, of concretely encouraging new paths to pursue” that are better suited to climate-protection objectives and to contributing “to the positive outcome of COP26.”
Before his speech, Francis gave a private audience to Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
“His Holiness’s leadership is a source of joy and hope for Catholics and for all people, challenging each of us to be good stewards of God’s creation, to act on climate, to embrace the refugee, the immigrant and the poor, and to recognize the dignity and divinity in everyone,” Pelosi said in a statement after her audience with Francis.
She called the pontiff’s 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’, exhorting people to protect the environment, “a powerful challenge to the global community to act decisively on the climate crisis with special attention to the most vulnerable communities.”
During their encounter, Pelosi expressed gratitude “for the immense moral clarity and urgency that His Holiness continues to bring to the climate crisis,” the statement said.
Representing some 1.2 billion people, the CVF consists of countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Pacific.
The group has been key in pushing the rest of the world to accept the idea of keeping the rise in global temperatures to under 1.5C this century.
This was incorporated into the Paris agreement in 2015.
Recent research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests that the threshold will be passed in little over a decade at current rates of carbon emissions.
In less than two months, global leaders will gather in Glasgow for COP26, the most critical meeting on climate change since Paris.
Ahead of the Glasgow meeting, the CVF has issued a manifesto for what the conference must deliver to keep the planet safe and protect the most vulnerable.
Environmental groups have suggested postponing the meeting, on the grounds that vaccine distribution is inequitable and that delegates from poorer countries face huge bills for quarantine hotels when they arrive in the UK.
However, the CVF member states insist the meeting must go ahead in person, and are calling for support and “facilitated access” to ensure inclusive participation.
The UK government has responded to these calls by agreeing to pay the quarantine hotel expenses of any delegate, observer or media from a developing country.
The vulnerable group says that progress on climate change has stalled and COP26 should move forward with what it terms a “climate emergency pact”.
This would see every country put forward a new climate plan every year between now and 2025.
At present, signatories of the Paris agreement are only obliged to put forward new plans every five years.
The vulnerable nations say that richer countries must fulfil their obligations to deliver $100bn in climate finance per year over the 2020-24 period.
The CVF nations want this money to be split 50-50 between cutting carbon and helping countries adapt to the threat posed by rising temperatures.
The countries also want the UK to “take full responsibility” for this aspect of the negotiations, saying it is vital to restore confidence in the Paris pact.
Among the other areas that the most vulnerable nations want to see progress on is the question of debt-for-climate swaps.
Many of the world’s poorest countries have large debt burdens, and these have been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic which has stretched finances even further.
In a debt-for-climate swap, a country can reduce what it owes to international creditors by directing the debt service payments to fund renewable energy or greater protection for nature.
One such restructuring was recently announced by Belize where the debt money will now go to support marine conservation projects instead.
“Vulnerable countries have unique needs – and public-private collaboration will be key to addressing them,” said Nigel Topping, who’s the UK’s high-level climate action champion for COP26.
“Whether it is in debt for nature swaps such as the recent Belize announcement or in increasing public sector capability to structure investment projects to attract private finance, the aim is to accelerate progress in this area so that 2022 becomes the year of climate action solidarity.”
Victims of the Oct. 6, 2018 earthquake in Haiti./ Catholic Relief Services.
Sister Marilyn Marie Minter was praying when she felt an earthquake rock Haiti.
“My chair began to shake,” she told EWTN News In Depth on Aug. 27. “And I’m going, ‘What the heck is going on?’”
As one of four Felician Sisters of North America serving in Haiti, Sr. Marilyn detailed her experience of the 7.2-magnitude earthquake that struck the country on Aug. 14. That morning, she and her Felician sisters were at their convent in Jacmel, 80 miles from the earthquake’s epicenter in Les Cayes. They ran.
“Sister Inga, who’s in the room next to me, she yells out, ‘Get out of the house quickly! It’s an earthquake! Get out! Now! Fast!’” Sr. Marilyn said. “Because our other two sisters that are with us, this is their first experience ever with an earthquake.”
The four sisters – Sr. Marilyn, Sr. Inga Borko, Sr. Mary Izajasza Rojek, and Sr. Mary Julitta Kurek – run a mission complex that includes a mobile medical clinic, a pharmacy, a volunteer house, an activity center, a playground, a computer lab for students, and a kitchen that feeds nearly 100 children.
Internationally, the Felician Sisters represent more than 1,000 religious women who practice a Franciscan way of life across four continents. Founded by Blessed Mary Angela Truszkowska in 1855, they began in Poland and arrived in North America in 1874.
In 2009, the Felician Sisters of North America formed Our Lady of Hope Province, which consists of eight Felician provinces across the U.S. and Canada. They strive to live out their mission to “cooperate with Christ in the spiritual renewal of the world.” This means ministering to children, at-risk youth, college students, seniors, individuals with disabilities, those in prison and detention centers, and others who are marginalized and living in poverty.
Sr. Marilyn first traveled with her order to Haiti in 2010, after the country suffered a 7.0-magnitude earthquake that killed an estimated 250,000 people. They returned in 2012, and, in 2018, they dedicated their mission to serve Haitians in four core areas: healing the sick, providing clean water, feeding the hungry, and educating tomorrow’s leaders.
When the sisters realized they felt an earthquake, they ran out of the house. Sr. Marilyn remembered hearing yelling and screaming from their neighbors. After waiting outside for roughly 20 minutes, the sisters returned to their house and wrote to their superior in Pennsylvania to assure her of their safety.
Others in Haiti weren’t so lucky. The earthquake killed more than 2,200 people and more than 300 people are still missing. According to Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency, the natural disaster left 12,268 injured and nearly 53,000 houses destroyed. World Vision reported that another 77,000 homes were damaged, along with 60 places of worship, 20 schools, 25 health centers, and 48 foster homes that care for 1,700 children.
“We heard how devastating it was in Les Cayes, Jeremie, and other villages west [of] us,” Sr. Marilyn said.
Twenty people died when St. Famille du Toirac Church near Les Cayes collapsed. In Les Anglais, the earthquake ruined Immaculate Conception Church, killing 17 people younger than 25 years old.
“A church in Les Cayes was having a baptism, and we saw photos of these dead children in their white outfits,” she told OSV. “It makes your heart cry.”
Even after the earthquake, the danger wasn’t over for the sisters: At 2 p.m., they felt an aftershock and ran outside once more.
Three hours later, Caritas announced that it was collecting emergency materials for those directly impacted by the earthquake. The sisters sprang into action.
“We gathered what we had in our container – and our container was getting pretty low as it was – but we gathered medications, bandages, surgical gloves,” Sr. Marilyn told EWTN News In Depth. “We gathered clothing, towels, sheets, shoes that we had left over and we boxed them.”
Sr. Marilyn spoke from Lodi, New Jersey, where she was gathering supplies to bring back to Haiti, including clothing, medications, and 50 buckets for filtering clean water.
“With a bucket and filter, you can take rainwater and you can filter that water and give them purified water,” Sr. Marilyn emphasized. “You give one bucket and filter to a woman – a family – and then she gives clean water to three other families. You can have sustainability. You can have empowerment. And you can have independence.”
OSV reported that the sisters are currently raising money for Haiti to buy supplies, including medical and school materials, hygiene products, bedding, and baby items. Sr. Marilyn is also hoping to send laptop computers or tablets back to Haiti. Donations can be sent to Felician Sisters of North America, 871 Mercer Road, Beaver Falls, PA 15010, with “Haiti” in the memo. They are also accepting donations online at feliciansistersna.org.
The latest International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on the science of climate change, the sixth update of its ongoing research, begins by stating that the climate crisis is “unequivocally” caused by fossil fuel burning and forest destruction, among other human activities that have abruptly altered crucial Earth systems.
The IPCC cautions that possible collapse of Earth’s ecological systems, including major Atlantic Ocean currents, ice caps and the Amazon rainforest, “cannot be ruled out.”
Tempting as it may be, we need not resort to apocalyptic cynicism. We can literally sow seeds of life and hope, individually and communally, that renew Mother Earth’s regenerative powers. Sowing seeds, whether in one pot or a larger garden, is a way of practically living degrowth — pursuing an economic system based on policies that promote sustainability, rather than constant growth — and cultivating the radical abundance of God’s creation.
As I write, I stand on the unceded and occupied land of the Mohican people, “land of the waters that never run still,” or as white settlers here in Massachusetts call it, the Housatonic River. I believe we must begin individual change where we are and acknowledge how capitalism and colonization have divided us from Mother Earth and ourselves.
On recent walks along these “waters that never run still,” my partner and I have lamented how people fishing must throw the fish back into the river because the water and fish have been contaminated by the former General Electric plant that dumped PCBs into the water from 1932 through 1977.
Our greatest hope for the life of Mother Earth, however, is in our own individual and collective rootedness in her awesome regenerative life systems.
Vandana Shiva, the renowned physicist, ecological activist, mother and award-winning author, celebrates how “if we are part of the Earth, every being — it doesn’t matter whether they’re human beings or not — but every being, every tree, every animal, every microbe is part of an amazing Earth family. … There are no hierarchies in Earth democracy.”
Shiva summons us to see how we are Earth “interbeings” who are intricately interconnected with all other forms of life, and who need to claim our true common identity and power to live in harmony and reciprocity with Mother Earth.
Our greatest power, individually and communally, Shiva contends in the video “Saving Seeds at Home,” is in saving and sowing diverse seeds in our own homes and gardens. “The nature of seed,” she explains, is “to multiply, to be shared,” yet “all the new laws are designed to prevent us from saving seed to make seed uniform rather than diverse and to remove human intelligence from the reproduction and breeding of seed.”
She invites each of us to become “a scientist in service of life on Earth” to end the ways in which “colonization of this planet and life on it is taking place through seed, through genetic engineering and patenting.”
Discussing how agribusiness has created drought in California and does violence against the Earth and people, Shiva urges us to “get out of the supermarket, get out of the drought, get out of seed-slavery, get out of food slavery” and embrace “soil freedom by knowing your seed, saving it,” even “if it’s one pot on your windowsill, just a terrace in the city” or creating a garden in your yard or community.
In her book Who Really Feeds the World?: The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology, Shiva notes that 40% of greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change are from fossil-fuel-based industrial agriculture. She adds that agribusiness is waging war on biodiversity — by eviscerating as much as 90% of agricultural biodiversity — and a war on humanity by creating a food system in which 1 billion people are “permanently hungry” and another billion suffer from “food-related diseases” like obesity.
By contrast, Shiva writes, local farming communities produce 70% of the world’s food and “reflect diverse agroclimatic features” that protect biodiversity while developing diverse food cultures at the same time.
The movement Shiva initiated in India, Navdanya, has created more than 150 seed banks and trained more than 1 million farmers in “chemical-free, biodiversity-based organic farming.” This kind of local organic farming has “increased nutrition twofold,” and organic farmers earn 10 times more than commodity growing farmers because they do not waste money on chemicals and commercial machinery, Shiva says.
Indeed, Shiva’s leadership of the Navdanya organization in India since 1987 demonstrates the power of Gandhian nonviolent transformation through cultivation of seed diversity, living soil and food sovereignty.
Rishi Kumar, a farmer who has helped create hundreds of gardens in Los Angeles and serves as executive director of the Sarvodaya Institute, promotes gardening as a way of individual and collective healing, offering tips for starting at home.
The Sarvodaya Institute also cultivates gardening through its mission to end “colonial aggression against communities of color as the underlying cause of damage and destruction to our body” and commits to the “disassembly and decomposition of colonial power structures through all of our work.” Struggles for racial and ecological liberation are one, as I argue in my forthcoming book.
As we take individual initiative to sow living seed and soil, may we recognize Jesus’ invitation to understand how the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds, but when it grows becomes a large bush where the birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches, as Matthew’s Gospel says.
May all birds of the sky, bees, worms and grubs of the soil, and all creatures dwell in our gardens throughout Mother Earth, so all of our human and nonhuman kin may thrive. We are called to sow, share and multiply seeds of hope and healing for ourselves and all life.
Sr. Beatrice Mbilima of the Teresian Sisters (second from left) visits Loness Masautso’s family in Mtendere, a large village some 60 miles south of the Malawian capital of Lilongwe. The sister with her congregation is working to improve the lives of people with albinism in southern Malawi. (GSR photo/Doreen Ajiambo
MTENDERE, MALAWI — “We are not safe here; people are hunting for our body parts. We keep on hiding when we see strangers coming to our village. It’s time we sought asylum in the U.S.”
These were the words of 35-year-old Loness Masautso, a woman living with albinism in this remote, deeply traditional corner of southern Malawi.
Masautso, whose husband and three children all have albinism, said they survived an attempted attack in December last year by people wanting to kill them for their body parts. She said people unknown to them and armed with knives appeared at her door at 8 p.m. after the family had eaten dinner and one shouted to others, “Money is here! Money is here! Money is here!” People with albinism are often referred to as “money” because their body parts can be sold illegally.
“We became so afraid and I knew we were going to die,” said a teary Masautso, who lives in a small mud brick house. “My husband hid the children in a separate room, and then we started to shout until neighbors came out of their houses and caught one of the attackers.” They later called the police, who arrested the man, she said.
Such attacks have changed the daily lives of people with albinism in this part of the world as many often live in constant fear for their lives. Children run away from strangers. Adults lock themselves inside their houses and hide under their beds when they see a stranger from afar. Local vigilantes accompany a few students going to school to ensure they are safe. Community members guard the adults with albinism as they work the farms. Their villages are also protected by vigilantes to ensure those with the genetic condition are not attacked, abducted or even killed.
Catholic women religious in Malawi visit them every morning and evening and mobilize members of the surrounding communities to protect them from attackers. In addition, they work to open up access to livelihoods and dermatological, vision and other health care services.
Masautso’s family is among thousands of families with albinism in the southern African nation who describe their homeland as a “hell” and are seeking asylum in the U.S. and Europe because of the persecution. Albinism includes a group of inherited disorders where there is little or no production of the pigment melanin, according to the Mayo Clinic. Melanin gives skin, hair and eyes their color and plays a role in the development of optic nerves. Reduced quantities or absence of melanin leads to vision problems for people with albinism.
People with albinism in Malawi continue to be targeted for their body parts, which, due to their whiteness, are believed to bring good luck and wealth. The attacks include killings, tampering with graves, attempted abductions and physical violence. The assaults and killings are said to be fueled by poverty and superstition, which lead those afflicted to live in fear of harm and denial of human rights such as education, health care, employment and family life.
The landlocked country has more than 134,000 people with albinism, representing 0.8% of the total population, according to the 2018 Malawi Population and Housing Census. Since 2015, more than 160 people with albinism have been killed in the country, and thousands of others have faced various human rights violations, according to media reports. Similar cases of violations are also being reported in neighboring Tanzania, Mozambique and Zambia.
Religious leaders, local officials and elders told Global Sisters Report that witch doctors promote that body parts of an albino have magical powers to bring luck, including making someone rich or powerful, and that having sex with people with albinism cures diseases like HIV/AIDS, infertility and cancer. They said an entire human body of an albino can fetch up to $75,000, while an arm or a leg could bring about $2,000.
The illegal business is fueled by poverty, they said, adding that the majority of Malawians are poor and are looking for ways to come out of poverty. In April 2021, the small agrarian country was ranked the fifth poorest in the world, based on International Monetary Fund data.
“These people are being killed like animals because of lust for money,” said Loyd Kuyenda, a village administrator overseeing Mtendere, a large village some 60 miles south of the Malawian capital of Lilongwe. “People with albinism have been forced to hide in their houses to avoid being murdered or kidnapped.”
The widespread killing of people with albinism for their body parts and amputations of their limbs has prompted religious leaders, including nuns, to launch a campaign to educate the communities to abandon cultural beliefs and stop targeting albino people.
Teresian Sr. Beatrice Mbilima who leads the campaign, said people with albinism often face isolation and stigma for their entire lives and are denied their basic rights, such as the right to go to school, have access to health care services, get jobs and have a family.
“We are preaching the word of God to the people so that it changes their minds and [leads them to] abandon their belief in witchcraft,” said Mbilima, noting that the susceptibility to witchcraft is widespread in rural Malawi. “As a church, we have the responsibility to provide religious teachings to people so that they can believe in God and not in witchcraft.”
Mbilima and her congregation have been conducting awareness campaigns in southern Malawi by organizing public meetings and distributing flyers to educate the communities about the rights of people with albinism and dispel the myths surrounding their conditions.
“We teach people not to segregate [people with albinism]; rather they should see them as normal human beings as they are,” she said, adding that her congregation carries out awareness campaigns at least every three months to ensure everyone gets the message. Mbilima said government restrictions and lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic have slowed community sensitization to reduce myths and misconceptions around people with albinism.
Sisters also run a health clinic in southern Malawi where they provide dermatology services and distribute sunglasses, cream, clothing, hats, shade and sunscreen to people with albinism. They have engaged the youth in various communities to guard houses of people with albinism to protect them from attacks.
“We are committed to protecting these people and ensuring they are safe,” said Mbilima, whose congregation also provides hygiene kits and food items like grains, vegetable oil, maize flour, pulses and rice. “We have a plan to build them houses if we get the resources and sponsor their children to get education.”
To end albino persecution in the country, some of the people living with albinism want the government to intervene and help religious leaders stop the ongoing atrocities against them. Musa Wiladi, 38, said the nuns and other religious leaders have tried to help them where they can, but the government needs to protect them, investigate and prosecute offenders, give people with albinism jobs and financial support.
“I grew up a very disturbed man. I was treated as if I was not a human being. People called me a ghost because they believed I had supernatural powers. Others told me that my mother was impregnated by a white man,” said Wiladi, who is now married with three children without albinism. “I was forced to drop out of school because of my security. The government should take some measures to ensure the rights of people living with albinism are protected.”
Still, some analysts say it is not easy to end these killings and abductions. One of the witch doctors from Tabora, a rural town in northwestern Tanzania, told Global Sisters Report that it’s not easy to stop something that makes people rich and brings people out of poverty.
The witch doctor, who didn’t want his name mentioned because of his safety, said people often receive albino limbs and organs from neighboring countries, including Malawi, which are used to bring good luck, wealth and political success. People who have risked undertaking this kind of business have been able to build better houses, buy good cars and invest in urban businesses, he said.
“It’s true that those body parts of people with albinism can make someone rich, bring fortunes, and make one gain political power,” he said. “If it weren’t true, then people could have stopped all these killings. But they can’t stop it because they know there are benefits.”
Mbilima dismissed the witch doctor’s belief, saying she has never seen anyone becoming rich because of trading organs of people with albinism.
“This belief that somebody else’s body organs could give you wealth is really unfortunate and absurd,” she said, adding that the belief gives them reasons to continue creating awareness so that people can change their attitudes. “Whenever I hear such stories, honestly, I always feel very bad because all of us are made in the image and likeness of God, and no one has the right to deprive another of life.”
Catholic officials and human rights campaigners, who are also carrying out awareness campaigns on behalf of people with albinism, said the government needs to take necessary measures to prevent attacks, including murders, and discrimination against people with albinism.
Malawi’s government has been slow to prosecute suspects accused of attacking and murdering people with albinism because police lack forensic skills, resources and legal training, activists and religious leaders contend. The majority of cases that have gone to court have failed because of flawed investigations and a lack of evidence, they said, concluding that security has not improved, leaving thousands of people with albinism vulnerable to all kinds of attacks.
“There are many cases that we are trying to push for their conclusion and ensure there is stiffer punishment that needs to be given to those violating the rights of others,” Boniface Chibwana, the national coordinator of Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace of the Malawi bishops’ conference, told Global Sisters Report in an interview in August. “The prolonging of some of these cases is making the perpetrators walk free, and they continue to commit the same crimes.”
Chibwana said amputations and murders of people with albinism for their body parts were still happening across the country. Two weeks ago, for instance, the body of a person with albinism was found in a decomposing state in Blantyre, the second largest city in southern Malawi. The hands and legs had been cut off.
“If stiffer punishments could be given to those found culpable, then there won’t be these killings and abductions,” he said, noting that his organization has intensified its campaign focused on empowering local people with financial support, awareness and legal training on the rights of people with albinism.
Meanwhile, Masautso and her family still live in fear of persecution and violence, despite the efforts being undertaken by religious leaders and human right activists to protect them.
“I need to quickly move out of this place with my family,” she said. “We are not safe, and death can knock on our door anytime.”
A village in the parish of Fang, in the Chiang Mai Diocese in Thailand, where the Presentation Sisters’ mission community operates. The parish includes 21 villages, and the sisters work with all of them through their mission center. (Courtesy of Frances Hayes)
Inspired by the command of Jesus, “Go out to the whole world” (Mark 16:15) and a similar exhortation of our foundress, Nano Nagle, some Presentation Sisters are missioned in the northern part of Thailand, bordering Myanmar and Laos. Our community in Thailand — made up of Indian, Pakistani and Filipina Sisters — is part of our Philippines unit.
So on behalf of the Thai mission community in the parish of Fang, in the Chiang Mai Diocese, Sister Jancy greets you all in the Thai language: “Sawadee kha!”
Our parish includes 21 villages, and we work with all of them through our mission center; we conduct regular visits and awareness programs in six villages. We are connected to about 630 families and 450 children.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, tribal people have been slowly migrating from Myanmar into northern Thailand, and remain concentrated mainly in the border areas between Myanmar and Thailand. The Thai government recognizes six tribal groups. We, the Presentation Sisters, are working with three of the groups: the Lahu, Akha and Thai Yai (the Shan migrant workers).
From 1999 to 2019, we worked in collaboration with the PIME (Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions) Italian Missionary priests and brothers, and now we work with the Priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of the Betharram community. Our ministries include visitation, health care, religious instruction, programs on drug prevention and human trafficking, and enabling the people to gain Thai citizenship and access their rights. Of course, we work with other religious congregations, network with diocesan commissions, and cooperate with Buddhist neighbors for celebrations and interfaith dialogue.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 3, 4, 5 and 13 are our focus, to empower the people to bring about the changes we hope for in the health, education and gender equality of these people. We depend on the Thai government programs for assistance offered to those with disabilities. In a survey conducted throughout the parish villages we located 18 young people eligible for government aid. We also obtained access to a program making powdered milk available to babies whose mothers are unable to nurse them.
Information on the government program for the identification, prevention and eradication of COVID-19 has been available throughout the parish. We follow the protocols and rules which were announced by the Thai government and the church, conducted awareness programs, and distributed masks and sanitizing lotion for the people.
In collaboration with the Good Shepherd Sisters, 30 young people participated in workshops designed to inform the participants — and then their village communities — about the problems associated with human trafficking. This also entailed a visit to “red-light areas” of Bangkok and the rehabilitation center operated by the sisters at Pattaya. This new sense of awareness of the issues has created a greater strength of unity and determination to prevent the young people from being lured to the “big cities.” The participants have also taken on a more active leadership role within their village community.
We especially focus on the rights and opportunities for women and children, and equitable education for the children, providing board/lodging and transport for children so they can attend the mainstream school, and encouraging them to go on to vocational training or university studies.
Since all schooling is done in the Thai language, it is essential that the hill tribe children learn this very early, although it may be their second or third language. The sisters provide Thai and English lessons for the children at the Epiphany Catholic Centre run by the Betharram priests, as well as providing extension activities in sports, music and recreation. Keeping their own ethnic customs alive is done through community sharing of skills in dancing, handwork, singing and cultural celebrations. The children are encouraged to dress in their ethnic clothes for the Sunday liturgy and keep alive the customs and traditions of their people.
Life for the sisters is certainly very full and in one sense, the restrictions due to the COVID-19 lockdowns have granted a slight reprieve from their busyness; this has given them extra time to do researching and planning for the future development of the people they serve.
Two of the sisters in the local community went on home visits during the pandemic and were unable to return at that time because of lockdowns. I, Sister Jancy Selvaraj, was one of the two sisters left. I developed and offered a PowerPoint presentation on the Thai missions, via a Zoom meeting for the justice contacts and other interested sisters of the International Presentation Association.
I, Frances, am another Presentation Sister eagerly awaiting her return to Thailand! As a member of the West Australian Congregation, I ministered for five years in Thailand and am now waiting for the easing of travel restriction to be able to return. Then I will work as a missionary with Palms Australia, (an organization that facilitates Australian volunteer work) mentoring Thai teachers in their English lessons for the Thai and Karen students at the Thai/Myanmar northwest border.
We continue to rediscover the dynamism of Nano Nagle’s charism, unfolding for tribal migrants in northern Thailand so that they will have a future full of hope.
Representing some 1.2 billion people, the CVF consists of countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Pacific.
The group has been key in pushing the rest of the world to accept the idea of keeping the rise in global temperatures to under 1.5C this century.
This was incorporated into the Paris agreement in 2015.
Recent research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests that the threshold will be passed in little over a decade at current rates of carbon emissions.
In less than two months, global leaders will gather in Glasgow for COP26, the most critical meeting on climate change since Paris.
Ahead of the Glasgow meeting, the CVF has issued a manifesto for what the conference must deliver to keep the planet safe and protect the most vulnerable.
Environmental groups have suggested postponing the meeting, on the grounds that vaccine distribution is inequitable and that delegates from poorer countries face huge bills for quarantine hotels when they arrive in the UK.
However, the CVF member states insist the meeting must go ahead in person, and are calling for support and “facilitated access” to ensure inclusive participation.
The UK government has responded to these calls by agreeing to pay the quarantine hotel expenses of any delegate, observer or media from a developing country.
The vulnerable group says that progress on climate change has stalled and COP26 should move forward with what it terms a “climate emergency pact”.
This would see every country put forward a new climate plan every year between now and 2025.
At present, signatories of the Paris agreement are only obliged to put forward new plans every five years.
The vulnerable nations say that richer countries must fulfil their obligations to deliver $100bn in climate finance per year over the 2020-24 period.
The CVF nations want this money to be split 50-50 between cutting carbon and helping countries adapt to the threat posed by rising temperatures.
The countries also want the UK to “take full responsibility” for this aspect of the negotiations, saying it is vital to restore confidence in the Paris pact.
Among the other areas that the most vulnerable nations want to see progress on is the question of debt-for-climate swaps.
Many of the world’s poorest countries have large debt burdens, and these have been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic which has stretched finances even further.
In a debt-for-climate swap, a country can reduce what it owes to international creditors by directing the debt service payments to fund renewable energy or greater protection for nature.
One such restructuring was recently announced by Belize where the debt money will now go to support marine conservation projects instead.
“Vulnerable countries have unique needs – and public-private collaboration will be key to addressing them,” said Nigel Topping, who’s the UK’s high-level climate action champion for COP26.
“Whether it is in debt for nature swaps such as the recent Belize announcement or in increasing public sector capability to structure investment projects to attract private finance, the aim is to accelerate progress in this area so that 2022 becomes the year of climate action solidarity.”
Deon Yanga waits to be tested for tuberculosis at a mobile clinic in Gugulethu township near Cape Town, South Africa, March 26, 2021. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings
GENEVA, – Hundreds of thousands of people will die of tuberculosis left untreated because of disruption to healthcare systems in poor countries caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, a global aid fund said.
In a few of the world’s poorest countries, excess deaths from AIDS and tuberculosis (TB) could even exceed those from the coronavirus itself, said the head of the Geneva-based aid body, known as the Global Fund.
The Fund’s annual report for 2020, released on Wednesday, showed that the number of people treated for drug-resistant tuberculosis in countries where it operates fell by 19%. A decline of 11% was reported in HIV prevention programmes and services.
“Essentially, about a million people less were treated for TB in 2020 than in 2019 and I’m afraid that will inevitably mean that hundreds of thousands of people will die,” Executive Director Peter Sands told Reuters.
While precise death tolls are as yet unknown, Sands said that for some poor countries, such as parts of the Sahel region in Africa, excess deaths from the setback in the fight against diseases such as TB or AIDS might prove higher than from COVID-19 itself.
The Geneva-based Global Fund is an alliance of governments, civil society and private sector partners investing more than $4 billion per year to fight tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS. The United States is its top donor.
Sands said services were affected by COVID-19 lockdowns while clinics, staff and diagnostics normally used for TB were instead deployed for COVID-19 in countries such as India and across Africa. He added that he expected further disruptions this year due to the Delta variant.
He said the decline in treatment for other diseases “underscores the need to look at the total impact of COVID-19 and measure success in combating it not just by the reduction in deaths due to COVID-19 itself but to the knock on impact”.
Malaria proved to be an exception to the trend in 2020, and prevention activities remained stable or increased compared to 2019, the Global Fund said.
Haitian immigrants make their way along a rope suspended above the Rio Grande on their way to the United States Sept. 22. (Nuri Vallbona)
Ciudad Acuña, Mexico — Clusters of Haitians stood on the riverbank, removing tennis shoes, putting belongings in garbage bags and hoisting children on their shoulders. The waters of the Rio Grande had risen, and the current was gaining momentum. As they plotted their path, they found an unlikely ally that could potentially lead to a better life in the United States: a yellow rope.
The migrants clung to the nylon cord as they forged the river’s chest-deep waters between Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, and Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 22. Ignoring a row of law enforcement vehicles and a Humvee lined up along the U.S. shore, the procession of immigrants continued toward the international bridge where an estimated 15,000 had once camped, overwhelming immigration officials in the tiny town of Del Rio.
“There was food and shade on the Mexican side, but their dream was to be free in the U.S., so it was like, ‘Oh, my goodness, this is terrible that we have this whole blockade up,’ ” said Sr. Ursula Herrera, a Benedictine Sister of Boerne, Texas. “People are just seeking a better life for themselves, for their children, and here, they are so close and yet so far.”
Recent images of immigrants crammed under the international bridge, and officers on horseback trying to grab and corral them drew outrage across the political spectrum. The threat of deportation left many migrants in limbo, too afraid to take their chances with the asylum process but stuck in Mexico without work permits or a means to support themselves.
As the number of Haitian arrivals at the border swelled, Catholic sisters, religious organizations, nonprofits and churches banded together with a common goal: provide basic services and restore human dignity.
“If God has allowed these different religions, then we need to support each other. Therefore, it doesn’t matter what your religious beliefs are. We are all God’s children. We were all created equal, so we need to treat each other with respect,” Herrera said.
On the Mexican shore, other Haitians, aid workers and journalists stood watch over those who ventured into the Rio Grande. When one man swam downstream to rescue a bag that floated off with the current, the crowd gasped. His struggle to return to the rope was fruitless. As he emerged from the bushes further down, sighs of relief arose.
“I always think, knowing the sacrifices they’re going through, they still want something better for their children, and they’re willing to sacrifice their own lives just to get their children over here where they feel they can have a better life,” Herrera said from her home in Eagle Pass, Texas.
The sister joined a team of volunteers from Casa Hogar Getsemaní, a Baptist orphanage in Morelos, Mexico, on Sept. 22 to pass out lemonade and more than 130 plates of hot dogs, rice, beans, tortillas and pork stew to the migrants milling around an immigration camp in Ciudad Acuña.
The call from the orphanage’s director, Paulina Bivens, came amid a tragic week for Herrera, who lost her friend and fellow Benedictine sister Germaine Sutton after a stroke days before.
“I just feel that if God is calling me to do something, he’s going to provide me with the means and the time,” Herrera said.
Throughout September, Matt Mayberry, a pastor at the Southern Baptist City Church Del Rio, said he was inundated with calls from churches across the country offering to support his congregation’s efforts to feed those camped under the bridge. He estimated volunteers handed out more than 16,000 sandwiches and numerous snacks to immigrants and border officials until the federal government stepped in to provide food Sept. 15.
Members from one Baptist church drove four and a half hours to deliver their sandwiches, Mayberry said.
“Our understanding of Scripture is that we were made in God’s image — all humans,” he said. “And so, regardless of our ethnicity or nationality, every human is worthy of human dignity and value. Our church and all the churches who have joined us believe the same thing.”
Herrera and Bivens’ volunteers were among dozens of aid workers feeding several hundred Haitians who were able to spread out under trees across large fields of open space in Ciudad Acuña, a contrast to the thousands who had sheltered across the river under the Del Rio bridge.
All who were interviewed said they had traveled from either Brazil or Chile, where many Haitian expats tried to make a life amid political turmoil at home. The trek to the U.S.-Mexico border took between one to three months by bus and on foot. But soon after arriving, the migrants faced a new threat: deportation.
Around 4,000 Haitians have been deported from the United States in the last two weeks, Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, told CNN on Sept. 26. His department estimated that 30,000 had been processed in Del Rio since Sept. 9 and that 8,000 returned voluntarily to Mexico. Currently, no migrants are camped under the international bridge.
After hearing expulsions were possible, some migrants had second thoughts about taking the final step across the river.
“I’m afraid to go back to Haiti,” Fredelin Jean said, leaning against the wall of a small structure that provided shade to a few of his friends. About 10 cellphones sat charging a few feet away. “Right now, Haiti is going through a difficult situation: the earthquake … political problems. I was in danger every day.”
In Haiti, Jean was an elementary school teacher who taught English, Creole and French. He later moved to Brazil for three years, but the lack of work permits kept him from finding a similar job. Tired of the stress, he and his friends headed to the United States, spending around $6,000 each to travel by bus and on foot just to reach the U.S.-Mexico border.
“There were thieves. There were women that had been whipped by thieves because they didn’t have money,” he said, adding that women had also been raped. “A lot of my friends saw a lot of dead people.”
Jean said he wanted to have legal status and hoped he might be able to do that in Mexico. Others had the same idea: Nearby, nearly two dozen lined up to speak to a worker from the Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, the National Commission for Human Rights, hoping she could help them secure Mexican work permits.
When about 400 Haitians arrived on foot at San Fernando, Tamaulipas, Mexico, on Sept. 17, Fr. Francisco Gallardo, a Catholic priest and director of the Casa del Migrante shelter in Matamoros, Mexico, drove almost two hours south to meet them. There, he and Juan Sierra, a lay assistant, joined ministers from other faiths to guide the caravan as it came to a fork in the road, hoping to avoid a repeat of the August 2010 mass killing of 72 immigrants in the town.
As the group neared Reynosa, Mexico, the next day, Gallardo alerted the news media and met them at the town’s immigration checkpoint to facilitate the group’s passage into the border town, Sierra said.
“The whole process was reported live [in the media], so then, the authorities felt forbidden to confront the Haitians,” Sierra said. “We convinced the entire caravan not to be aggressive — to pass with joy, yes, but with respect. “
Sr. Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, regularly visits thousands of Haitians sleeping in the plaza in Reynosa. The Missionaries of Jesus sister praised the way pastors from local evangelical churches and the Catholic Church were working together to find housing for the town’s newest residents because they were more vulnerable to crime.
At a Sept. 23 public hearing for the Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee of the Texas House of Representatives, Pimentel called for the state and federal governments to support the community’s efforts to make sure immigrants were treated with dignity and respect.
“Families are coming here because they are afraid for their lives, especially of their children,” she said. “They’re looking not for a better life, but just life. They want to be safe.”
snddenJPIC 